St. Paul, Minn,: What is your standard for determining whether they are reliable, let alone forged? Do you need 20 percent certainty? 50 percent? Higher?
Mary Mapes: For me the standard is being convinced myself and as a part of a large group of coworkers. I felt I had four ways of verifying the documents: the endorsement of two of the document analysts, corroboration of Lt. Col. Killian's commander on the content of the memos, vetting of the memos by my group for bad information or small errors and a meshing of the new documents with those in Bush's official record.
Omaha, Neb.: In Appendix 4 of the Independent Review Panel, Peter Tytell, a widely acknowledged typewriter and document examination expert concluded that "the Killian documents were generated on a computer" and that they "were not produced on a typewriter in the 1970s and therefore not authentic." Given his indisputable expertise, wouldn't this end the debate as to whether or not they were forgeries?
Mary Mapes: Not at all. Document analysts disagree all the time. That is the point of the profession. They serve as expert witnesses in cases all the time. It is an art and science that is more akin to hair analysis than to DNA testing.
Besides, there is no one typeface or document analysis God. They are many people with experience.
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Cincinnati, Ohio: The CBS memos appear to have been created in Microsoft Word. I've heard you recently say that the documents could not have been created in Microsoft Word. Can you explain?
Mary Mapes: The key is that they APPEAR to have been created in Word. That is a parlor trick that doesn't bear close scrutiny. We are preparing two things on the Web site truthandduty.com which will illustrate this fallacy. One is a comparison between the memos' font and Times New Roman, which was used to supposedly recreate the Word version of the memos. The other bit of evidence is a new exhaustive analysis that shows through wer on the letters that these memos were types not laser printed.
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San Diego, Calif.: Do you honestly believe that your political opinions do not in any way influence what stories you decide to pursue?
Mary Mapes: I think every aspect of our lives leads us to cover certain stories. I have lived in Texas for 15 years. That led me to cover Karla Faye Tucker, the Oklahoma City bombing and George W.Bush. He was my governor before he was the president and I had an interest in him and access to information because of where I lived. Proximity not politics led me.
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Bentonville, Va.: What was the official reason for your firing from CBS? Do you think you have grounds for a wrongful termination suit if they can't prove the documents were false?
Or is the issue that there were enough reasons to doubt them that the story should have been pulled postponed.
Mary Mapes: I was fired for airing a story that could not definitively be proved false but made CBS's public relations relations department cringe. I guess that was the reason. I am not a lawyer and don't know the ins and outs of a lawsuit. Sometimes in life, you just get hot coffee spilled on you at a restaurant, clean up and walk out rather than sue. I want to get on with my life.
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Munich, Germany: If I recall correctly, one of the chief complaints against you regarding the National Guard Documents affair was that you informed someone from the Democratic Party of their existence, immediately after receiving them from your source. This seemed to put your objectivity in doubt.
How do you feel about this, and what are your thoughts on political journalism and the journalist's struggle to remain unbiased while reporting?
Mary Mapes: I did not inform anyone in the democratic party of their existence. Their rumored existence was one of the worst kept secrets in Texas in the summer of 2004. I passed on Bill Burkett's phone number to a press person at Burkett's request because he wanted to give the Kerry team advice about the Swift Boat attacks. I asked for permission before I did it, but I should not have made the call, permission or no. Still, it is pretty mild compared to the regular exchange of information that goes on in Washington, at least according to the Fitzgerald investigation.
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Cincinnati, Ohio: Do you have evidence that the new cache of documents are authentic?
Mary Mapes: I have the word of the archivist who pulled them and his long record of splendid work on historical archive materials. His name is Steve Jones and he heads Lyon Research in Virginia.
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Washington, D.C.: Are you bitter about your termination with CBS News? Are you trying to "get back" at them for firing you?
Mary Mapes: I am not bitter. I love CBS News and the people there and I always will. I had 15 wonderful years and four bad months. That is more than many can say about their careers. I can't "get back" at them. I did want to report what I thought was a fascinating story of media, politics, and history.
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New York City, N.Y.: In your opinion, did Bush do his duty to serve his country in a time of war?
Mary Mapes: No and there are mountains of evidence to back that up.
